Read Online News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman - Free Book Online

identified with the regime of her kidnappers. She seemed like another jailer who admonished her if she snored or coughed in her sleep or moved more than she had to. Maruja would set down a glass, and Marina with a frightened “Careful!” would put it somewhereelse. Maruja would respond with immense contempt. “Don’t worry about it,” she would say. “You’re not the one in charge here.” To make matters even worse, the guards were always uneasy because Beatriz spent the day writing down details of her imprisonment so she could tell her husband and children about them when she was set free. She had also made a long list of everything she hated in theroom, and had to stop when she discovered there was nothing she did not hate. The guards had heard on the radio that Beatriz was a physical therapist, confused this with a psychotherapist, and would not allow her to write anymore because they were afraid she was developing a scientific method to make them lose their minds.
    Marina’s deterioration was understandable. After almost two months inthe antechamber of death, the arrival of the other two hostages must have been an intolerable dislocation for her in a world she had made hers, and hers alone. Her relationship to the guards, which had become very close, changed on account of them, and in less than two weeks she was suffering again from the same terrible pain and intense solitude she had managed to overcome.
    And yet, no nightseemed as ghastly to Maruja as the first one. It was interminable and freezing cold. At one in the morning the temperature in Bogotá—according to the Meteorology Institute—had been between 55 and 59 degrees, and it had rained downtown and in the area around the airport. Maruja was overcome by exhaustion. She began to snore as soon as she fell asleep, but her persistent, uncontrollable smoker’s cough,aggravated by the damp walls that released an icy moisture at dawn, kept waking her. Each time she coughed or snored, the guards would kick her in the head with their heels. Marina’s fear was uncontrollable, and she backedthem up, warning Maruja that they were going to tie her to the mattress so she wouldn’t move around so much, or gag her to stop her from snoring.
    Marina had Beatriz listento the early morning news. It was a mistake. In his first interview with Yami Amat of Caracol Radio, Dr. Pedro Guerrero attacked the abductors with a string of defiant insults. He challenged them to behave like men and show their faces. Beatriz was prostrate with terror, certain that she and the others would be the ones to pay for his abuse.
    Two days later, one of the bosses, his well-dressedbulk packed into six feet, two inches, kicked the door open and stormed into the room. His impeccable tropical wool suit, Italian loafers, and yellow silk tie were at variance with his churlish behavior. He cursed the guards with two or three obscenities, and raged at the most timid one, whom the others called Spots. “They tell me you’re very nervous,” he said. “Well let me warn you that around herenervous people get killed.” And then he turned to Maruja and said in a rude, impatient voice:
    “I heard you caused a lot of trouble last night, making noise and coughing.”
    Maruja replied with an exemplary calm that could have been mistaken for contempt.
    “I snore when I’m asleep, and don’t know I’m doing it,” she said. “I can’t control the cough because the room is freezing and the walls dripwater in the middle of the night.”
    The man was in no mood for complaints.
    “Do you think you can do whatever you want?” he shouted. “Let me tell you: If you snore again or cough at night, we can blow your head off.”
    Then he turned to Beatriz.
    “And if not you, then your children and husbands. We know all of them, and we know exactly where they are.”
    “Do what you want,” said Maruja. “There’snothing I can do to stop snoring. Kill me if you want to.”
    She was sincere, and in time